On July 23, a Tesla driver posted on Twitter the discovery of a hitherto unknown "bug".
While he had activated the autopilot of his car - whose autonomy is more advanced in the USA than in Europe - it began to slow inexplicably, while it was launched on a long straight line without obstacle.
Hey @elonmusk you might want to have your team look into the moon tricking the autopilot system.
The car thinks the moon is a yellow traffic light and wanted to keep slowing down.
🤦🏼 @Teslarati @teslaownersSV @TeslaJoy pic.twitter.com/6iPEsLAudD
- Jordan Nelson (@JordanTeslaTech) July 23, 2021
The reason ?
That evening, the moon was particularly low and particularly yellow.
The Tesla's sensors therefore believed to see an orange traffic light looming, and therefore did what it programmed to do in this situation: slow down.
Nothing serious, but it shows that if engineers do their best to anticipate as many conditions as possible to develop their technologies, it will always be impossible for them to foresee everything.
And it is often in real life that the most advanced widgets finish their tweaking.
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